cover image Emergency Doctor

Emergency Doctor

Edward Ziegler. HarperCollins Publishers, $17.95 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-06-015789-0

The emergency rooms at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospitalthe country's oldest municipal hospital, founded 250 years agotreat some 300 patients daily; three-fourths of the cases involve alcohol or drug abuse and a disproportionate number of the patients are paupers. It is a matter of pride for Goldfrank, director of the service, that no one is turned away, even as the department's resources are strained with indigent patients ""dumped'' from private clinics. With Reader's Digest editor Ziegler, Goldfrank and other Bellevue medical and housekeeping personnel recreate the somber, heroic, taxing work-a-day demands of saving lives under emergency conditions, including the lives of ``regulars'' like Eighth Street Eddie who needs to be deloused as well as treated and prisoners handcuffed to guards. The book is at once a social and medical document, overlong and, on occasion, tediously repetitious but gut-wrenching, heartwarming and instructive about the exigencies of this branch of medicine as practiced at the legendary institution. 25,000 first printing; $25,000 ad/promo; author tour. (September 2)